Tier Nation: The 26th Group
Writing by Green Guy on Thursday, 13 of March , 2008 at 11:56 pm
Linden game gods violate laws of nature to party
By Prokofy Neva, Kremlindenologist
today 26 groups - tomorrow - 513?
Our game-gods imposed a curious kind of metaversal democracy on us yesterday, in their accidental wisdom, creating a ginormous entity called “Concierge Party Group” inworld with 6,926 members.
Wait. Make that 6,727. Because the chat in this absolutely outsized Second Life Tier Nation drove at least 199 people instantly absolutely batty and they bailed.
MJ Linden put up a dirt-simple group charter: “Do not spam the group.” That never works on socializers in Second Life, however; one resident’s pithy sayings are another resident’s spam.
Blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight of a code-dictated mass movement, Concierge Party Group members immediately came to a very stark realization: the Lindens had violated Nature in two basic ways that they said could Never Be Done.
The first thing they did was make this the 26th group. 26th! How can you have 26 groups!!! In every office hour, on every JIRA comment, at every real-life meet up in the back of the bar, the Lindens have told us that we can never never never ever never ever ever ever never have more than 25 groups. Because. It would be too many calls to the data base. Yet…here they made one at the drop of a party hat.
The next thing they did was mass-invite people into this group — no, mass join them into the group so that upon log-on, they showed as as already members, without having to fumble with the wonky interface. Wow! Some land barons were saying, “Hey, I want that. How did they do that?” One button — instant mass audience or customer mailing list.
Something tells me the Lindens didn’t have to pay $100 to make this group, either.
But there was more…
It didn’t take the first member of Concierge Party Nation long to figure out that the voting tools worked! MJ Linden, unlike many controlling and fussy rape role-players and land barons who make groups, hadn’t figured out how to turn off the voting tool for the “everyone category” and just leave it for the officers.
And with good reason. As anyone with an inworld group of more than 1 person, let along 750, can tell you, what inevitably happens is that even with screening, some nit will post a vote, rather than a message (it used to be that was the only way to leave messages in the group), or they will put up a retarded referendum like “Did I fart?” which will have that exact effect even in a non-olfactorious world, because it forces numerous hapless group members, upon log-in, to have to bat away a drop-down blue-menu voting screen.
Proposition 1 of this new democracy, however wasn’t a spam, but a very urgent civic issue:
“I propose that we don’t get auto-invited”
A good deal of discussion went up about the sense of invasion people felt, being frog-marched into a group by Linden-run switches — and of course you couldn’t leave this roach motel because you had to have the group tag on to gain entrance to the party island on Saturday. That meant 4-5 long days of chat in a group with…well, it was down to 6,724 now, but let’s say there’s a LOT of chat in this group!
Proposition 2 wasn’t long in coming:
“Shut the fuck up.”
Proposition 1, having been found wanting by some expert JIRAhdists, soon morphed into Proposition 3:
“I propose that auto acception never be implemented.”
This bright new democrat had figured out REAL fast the sheer horrorifying implications of mass groupedness, and had thought of not only staying the Lindens’ hands this once, with a censorious sense of congress about their action. No, global action had to be contemplated. The prospect of any prim diva being able to put all her shoppers or club-goers into a force-group…any mall-going mangina able to bind every single avatar within her 96 m2 radar range into a group…or what if the Librarians on Info Island decided to group everybody who ever clicked on a kiosk…it made ad-farms seem like a mere stroll on the beach in a drug haze of draw distance at 64…
Contemplating the possibilities of talking with 6,926 people that first night, before 199 fled in knock-kneed horror, willing to ditch the prospect of partying hearty with the Lindens, I put up Propositions 3 and 4:
“Should Linden Lab open-source its server code?” and
“Should tier-paying residents have a collective seat on the board of Linden Lab”?
Well, democracy means a lot of spade-work. It’s the sort of thing of thing that Clay Shirkey, with his Here Comes Everybody sort of mobbing and wise-crowding, isn’t thinking about too much because he figure it will all be Our Gang.
“What does ‘open source’ mean?” asked one Concierge Party-goer, unaware of how his $125 “investment” could be going down the toilet someday. “What is server code?” asked another.
“Yes, paying tier is like paying tax, so yeah, no taxation without representation,” somebody concluded.
“No, it’s not.” “Yes, it is.” “No, it’s not.”
Then…20 minutes of RodneyKing Voom pleading for us to all go along. A group of 6,926 people is always a good place to join hands and sing “We Are the World,” somebody suggested.
Feeling a little bit like Scoble going from Facebook to Plaxo, I was wondering by this time if I could pass any inventory to 6,926 of my new friends. Turns out –nope.
In fact, a group this outrageously huge, well, it just doesn’t load. It took 10 minutes for my props to clear the Submitting….hang. Just trying to see who was on line (I was hoping to get a nice gander into the real log-on statistics with a sample this big!) was impossible, it would only show blanks, or 100 at a time.
One of the interesting statistics you could see in this group were numbers nobody ever thinks much about:
43 Linden Partiers
6,926 Concierge Partiers
And you wonder why they never seem to pass any h’ordeuvres in this joint, let alone get your sim up and running!
In case you thought some or many of these now 6,744 people might use this group to organize, oh, around texture theft or the woefully-inadequate new ad-farm policy or even to turn out votes for Obama, think again.
Tier Nation is busy deciding where they’ll find a toga to wear to the Lindens’ imposed-theme party. I have a feeling the Gor silk stalks are going to be doing a land-office business this week and even the Caliphate-imposing Al-Andalus sim might get their tier payed if they play their cards right.
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